MODELING & TALENT breakingintoshowbiz By Adam Hill Your REAL Victories By simply working to achieve your dreams, you’re taking away your critics’ ability to call you a loser LISA KUDROW fter returning from my second modeling and talent to work on in order to guarantee your future successes. Sure, it is A convention in three weeks, I am both exhilarated and taxed at the same time. What affects me the most at these conventions is the sadness of the contestants that believe they are losers. I want to personally con- sole and then assure each and every one of them that they are win- ners just by being there. Every one of us at one time or another will experience both wonderful to walk away from any event with a prize in your hands. It is a confirmation that you have done well in the eyes of others. However, I have frequently thought the person who won didn’t de- serve it as much as someone else. Did the winner deserve the award any less? Of course not. No matter how much I wanted someone else to win. The great statesman, Winston Churchill said, “True power is sides of this coin. We will be winners and losers. The great sales- an individual’s ability to move from failure to failure with no loss man, Napoleon Hill, once said that in order to sell one encyclope- of enthusiasm.” Where would Oprah Winfrey be today if she al- dia you had to knock on a hundred doors. That means 99 failures lowed the fact that although she tried her best she never even made out of 100 tries. I believe that salesperson will cut down the num- it into the Miss Black America finals? By not making it into the ber of failures if that salesperson learns something new with each finals meant she loss before she even had a chance to lose. Now door that opens. that’s losing. Before American Idol, there was a show called Star Search. I had Lisa Kudrow auditioned for the role of Roz on Fraiser. She be- a personal connection to Star Search as I directed the competitors lieved it to be the role of a lifetime and was devastated when she lost in the acting segment of that show. Here is a list of some of the out to Peri Gilpin. She believed her career would never take off. She Star Search losers—Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Alanis was a loser. A few weeks later she auditioned for and got her real role Morisette, LeAnn Rimes, Christina Aguilera, Destiny’s Child, of a lifetime on Friends. She didn’t lose Roz, she won Phoebe. Rosie O’Donnell, Drew Carey, Ray Romano, and the list goes on. Can you honestly call any of these wonderful talents losers? I WHY DO WE LOSE? doubt if any of them labeled themselves losers, either. There are many reasons we lose, and a fair amount of these rea- sons are out of your control. They prefer a tall person and you are A LITTLE CLARITY short. They want a soprano and you’re an alto. Those reasons and I believe the benefits of these conventions is not the winning or others like them are not and cannot be your concern. There are losing, as it is the experience itself. These conventions are a micro- other superficial reasons that may play a part in any competition. cosm of the real world. You learn from the experience. You are re- You may not have enough money to buy the best clothes or pay for minded of your strengths and weaknesses. You learn what you need the best haircuts and makeup. If this is true, my advice for the fu- 20 PAGEANTRY